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Teaching Lombreglia's Men Under Water.

Article Excerpt
Abstract

Ralph Lombreglia's short story "Men Under Water" contains a context of cinema and embedded texts. Students can better appreciate the clever layers of the story after they learn to identify the intersections of the story's plot with exterior narratives, specifically classic films. This paper shows how instructors can use film clips and simple narrative theory to elicit the postmodern portrayal of fantasy and conflicted masculinity in "Men Under Water."

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Like television magazines that hail Hollywood stars as the updated version of American heroes, Ralph Lombreglia's short story "Men Under Water" locates a twentieth-century masculine fantasy in the media industry.[1] I teach "Men Under Water" in a short story genre course at the college level, and I find that presenting the story within a context of classic film narratives as well as a simplified version of narrative theory offers the students a chance to find a foothold in an otherwise difficult postmodern short story. The progression from the short stories of Poe, Langston Hughes, and even Faulkner, to the postmodern can be a big leap for undergraduates. By offering students the familiarity of film, this lesson on "Men Under Water" helps to tie together an otherwise challenging narrative and show how Lombreglia's short story is self-consciously cinematic in its feel, plot, and discourse.[2]

In "Men Under Water," the title piece of Lombreglia's 1990 volume of short stories, a nameless handyman narrates his experience with his successful but thoughtlessly eccentric boss Gunther who employs the narrator to both maintain his tenements and write screenplays.[3] The stress of Gunther's thoughtlessness puts stress on Flip's marriage, and each Friday he quits, only to return to Gunther for an increase in pay when he can't find a better job. During the story's focal episode, Gunther finally stumbles upon a screenplay idea with potential, and Flip steps in to sell it to a providential investor when Gunther baulks. The final scene takes place underwater, as Gunther shares his scuba techniques and peaceful pool space with Flip, who finally decides to throw in all his chips with Gunther, the film idea, and a Hollywood version of the American Dream.

I begin introducing students to the idea of the embedded text in early short story lessons. Poe's "The Fall of the House...